On the reproduction of the musical economy after the Internet

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Abstract
The focus of this article is a crisis of reproduction that beset the contemporary popular music industry from the late 1990s onwards. In the early 21st century the music industry began to suffer from declining sales, negative growth and financial losses. Explanations internal to the music industry identified the cause of the crisis as the rise of Internet piracy, although the emergence of software formats, such as MP3, and Internet distribution systems is more accurately described as a ‘tipping point’ that brought into focus a set of deeper structural problems for the industry related to changing forms of popular music consumption. Drawing on research undertaken by the authors within US music companies, the article examines responses to the crisis in the form of three distinctive business models that represent different strategies in the face of the contemporary crisis of the musical economy, an arena within which a range of experiments are being undertaken in an effort to develop new ways of generating income. Nevertheless, there is reluctance within the industry to embrace the more radical organizational changes that might allow it to fully accommodate the impact of software formats and Internet distribution systems. A key reason for this, we argue, is the stakes that the leaders of the major record companies have in the preservation of the current social order of the musical economy.